Poor Vision
Physical Fault
You have significantly bad eyesight, in a time and place when vision correction is hard to come by. For five points, you are either Nearsighted or Farsighted.
Nearsighted. You have difficulty focusing on anything further away than your outstretched hand. Driving, sailing, or piloting a craft is difficult. You take a −1 penalty to all Perception, Discern, Machinery and ranged combat rolls beyond a distance of six feet away from you. Also, you tend not to see anything until it's right on top of you (−1 Reaction), meaning you will have difficulty identifying that ominous-looking approaching horseman and will fail to recognize even prominent landmarks until they're too close to be of much use, to name just a few problems.
Farsighted. Your long-distance vision is fine, but anything closer than six feet becomes a blur. You suffer a −1 penalty to Stealth, Search, Discern, Healing, and Machinery checks, plus all melee combat rolls. You also have trouble reading books or manipulating any small objects (i.e. needle and thread).
Barely Sighted. This version of the Fault is worth ten points and it is effectively a combination of Nearsighted and Farsighted. You don't see well at any distance, which is a death knell for a warrior but can be a fun trait for a less combat-oriented character. Imagine a mage who, after burying himself in books for years, can barely see past the end of his nose. Envision him trying to throw spells at targets that are little more than blurs of color, or recognize friends and foes in a crowd, or press the right button on a complicated mechanism… great potential for humor and challenges. You cumulatively take all the penalties listed above. Expect the GM to make the most of your near-blindness.
Note on vision correction: devices which focus and correct vision such as eyeglasses and magical artifacts do exist, but they are painstakingly hand-crafted and the secrets of their design are not widely known. In some places, these devices may not be available. Certainly in fantasy-themed stories, these objects would be worth several times their weight in gold — perhaps your GM could even use it as the object of a quest. In more modern stories, these devices are more prevalent, but still not cheap. You can purchase vision correction with your character's money or through the Trump Item of Value, but remember that such things are easily lost, broken, or stolen, but not so readily replaced; anytime you roll a critical failure you lose your corrective item and must spend time searching for it, during which time all the vision-related penalties come back. Jinkies, where are my glasses?
